How do we think
What separates us from the animal kingdom and from computers? Is your answer that we have conscious and we can think? "I think, so I am." But really, how do we think?
There are two component that makes up our thinking process: memory recollection and memory manipulation. The latter part includes imagination and logic derivation, which is probably what we commonly recognized as active thinking. Why I call imagination and logic derivation "memory manipulation"? Well, imagination is just putting our memory pieces together and making a new result that doesn't exist in our memory before. And logic derivation is merely connecting existing memory pieces and reaching an imagination result that makes sense. Does that makes sense?
For the convenience, let me refer to memory recollection process "passive thinking" and the other part "active thinking". Which part do you think contributes to the most of our smartness? It got to be the ability of active thinking, is it?
In the recent issue of "Scientific American" there is an article "Secrets of the Expert Mind". For those haven't read the magazine, from the research mainly on chess masters, experts don't "think" more than ordinary non-experts. What separates an chess grandmaster from mediocre player is their memory or experience. In the research, there is not evidence that those grandmasters have extraordinary ability in other realm, say image recognition or logic conclusion. In other word, our ability to active think is about the same. Actually, I think our ability to do passive thinking is about the same too.
Think it this way, if our mind is a computer, then all the discs and ram makes up our memory. Pulling stuff out of the memory or discs makes up passive thinking. Is running the code active thinking? No, that is still passive thinking, because how to run a certain opcode is predefined, so it is a piece of passive thinking as well. A computer does not have any active thinking process (which is after all, separates them from us). The "smartness" of computer is then, determined by its ability to recollect memories and the speed of running opcodes. Some computer is much faster, or "smarter" than other computers, but I don't think any human mind is any smarter than or faster than other minds. Why? Because computers are "slow", thus it is relatively easy to develop from 1 GHz processor to 2 GHz processor in a short period, thus having a much "smarter" computer coexist with a much "dumber" computer. Human mind is much faster (talking about our ability in recollecting most RELEVANT memory before we realize it). Certainly there will be some mind can work slightly faster than the other (lets say due to nutrition or blood pressure difference), but for a mind at such advanced level, it is very difficult to have two mind with noticeable difference. It is similar with two computers, one at 100Ghz and the other at 101Ghz.
But certainly there are smart people and there are dumb people. People are smart merely because they accumerlated more organized and thorough experience. We are accumerlating experience every living second, so I don't think the absolute amount of experience can be much a factor in smartness. Rather, it is the thoroughness wittin a field and the organization level that matters. Use the chess grandmaster example, they are smarter in playing chess because they have most thorough experience in chess games. They simply remember more game patterns then others. Also their memory of chess games are more organized. The have more connections between different game patterns. They have more connections between the moves with the game. Well, after all, these connections between memory pieces, are part of their memory as well. With such a massive, organized chess playing memory, grandmasters can re-call a whole game by just glancing at a game board, and they can foresee the result in the end.
Computers are much dumber than us not only because they lack active thinking, they lack the ability to organize memory and lack the ability to fast recall relevant memory as well. They are just dumb. (but they are just tools, we don't expect tools to be smart to be useful.)
How do we get smarter? By accumerlating experience, make it more thorough and more organized. There is simply no way around it. The research claims it requires 10 years of hard experience to become a chess grandmaster, or expert in any field.
10 years! How many times you can try that! No wonder experts are so scarce. Note that merely "in" the field for 10 years doesn't give you that expert experience. It is 10 years of effortful, top-open, motivated learning and training experience. Use the example of driving, we typically only effortful seeks that experience during the month before driving test, and most time in my driving after driving school is absent-minded. No wonder I am such a poor driver.
How can we go through 10 years of effortful hard training? Isn't that just crazy? Not, if you are strongly interested in the field, periodically rewarded and motivated by little successes and praises, and finds the goal of expert ultimately fascinating. When you have that, that 10 years of life is the most joyful life one can get. Not every expert had that 10 years of joy though, but many do.
Why some people are smarter than others? Because some are more interested in stuffs and more motivated.
There are two component that makes up our thinking process: memory recollection and memory manipulation. The latter part includes imagination and logic derivation, which is probably what we commonly recognized as active thinking. Why I call imagination and logic derivation "memory manipulation"? Well, imagination is just putting our memory pieces together and making a new result that doesn't exist in our memory before. And logic derivation is merely connecting existing memory pieces and reaching an imagination result that makes sense. Does that makes sense?
For the convenience, let me refer to memory recollection process "passive thinking" and the other part "active thinking". Which part do you think contributes to the most of our smartness? It got to be the ability of active thinking, is it?
In the recent issue of "Scientific American" there is an article "Secrets of the Expert Mind". For those haven't read the magazine, from the research mainly on chess masters, experts don't "think" more than ordinary non-experts. What separates an chess grandmaster from mediocre player is their memory or experience. In the research, there is not evidence that those grandmasters have extraordinary ability in other realm, say image recognition or logic conclusion. In other word, our ability to active think is about the same. Actually, I think our ability to do passive thinking is about the same too.
Think it this way, if our mind is a computer, then all the discs and ram makes up our memory. Pulling stuff out of the memory or discs makes up passive thinking. Is running the code active thinking? No, that is still passive thinking, because how to run a certain opcode is predefined, so it is a piece of passive thinking as well. A computer does not have any active thinking process (which is after all, separates them from us). The "smartness" of computer is then, determined by its ability to recollect memories and the speed of running opcodes. Some computer is much faster, or "smarter" than other computers, but I don't think any human mind is any smarter than or faster than other minds. Why? Because computers are "slow", thus it is relatively easy to develop from 1 GHz processor to 2 GHz processor in a short period, thus having a much "smarter" computer coexist with a much "dumber" computer. Human mind is much faster (talking about our ability in recollecting most RELEVANT memory before we realize it). Certainly there will be some mind can work slightly faster than the other (lets say due to nutrition or blood pressure difference), but for a mind at such advanced level, it is very difficult to have two mind with noticeable difference. It is similar with two computers, one at 100Ghz and the other at 101Ghz.
But certainly there are smart people and there are dumb people. People are smart merely because they accumerlated more organized and thorough experience. We are accumerlating experience every living second, so I don't think the absolute amount of experience can be much a factor in smartness. Rather, it is the thoroughness wittin a field and the organization level that matters. Use the chess grandmaster example, they are smarter in playing chess because they have most thorough experience in chess games. They simply remember more game patterns then others. Also their memory of chess games are more organized. The have more connections between different game patterns. They have more connections between the moves with the game. Well, after all, these connections between memory pieces, are part of their memory as well. With such a massive, organized chess playing memory, grandmasters can re-call a whole game by just glancing at a game board, and they can foresee the result in the end.
Computers are much dumber than us not only because they lack active thinking, they lack the ability to organize memory and lack the ability to fast recall relevant memory as well. They are just dumb. (but they are just tools, we don't expect tools to be smart to be useful.)
How do we get smarter? By accumerlating experience, make it more thorough and more organized. There is simply no way around it. The research claims it requires 10 years of hard experience to become a chess grandmaster, or expert in any field.
10 years! How many times you can try that! No wonder experts are so scarce. Note that merely "in" the field for 10 years doesn't give you that expert experience. It is 10 years of effortful, top-open, motivated learning and training experience. Use the example of driving, we typically only effortful seeks that experience during the month before driving test, and most time in my driving after driving school is absent-minded. No wonder I am such a poor driver.
How can we go through 10 years of effortful hard training? Isn't that just crazy? Not, if you are strongly interested in the field, periodically rewarded and motivated by little successes and praises, and finds the goal of expert ultimately fascinating. When you have that, that 10 years of life is the most joyful life one can get. Not every expert had that 10 years of joy though, but many do.
Why some people are smarter than others? Because some are more interested in stuffs and more motivated.
posted by Hui Zhou at 6:44 AM
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